# Is market research useful for a small business?

Owners still ask this before they spend, and the useful answer is about the decision in front of them, not about research in the abstract.

Many Jamaican entrepreneurs, and people about to become one, ask whether a new idea needs market research.

The 2012 post did not report a Balcostics survey. It passed on two answers from Quora. The names below are the people that page credited. The argument is theirs. The wording is cleaned.

## Knowing the market is not the same as guessing it

Amy Shropshire wrote that most of the mistakes she had seen, in firms of any size, came from people thinking they already knew the market. She had spent about 15 years advising nonprofits and start-ups. She liked their wish to get a product into someone's hands. The trouble started when she asked about the market and they could not answer. They knew the product. They knew little about the people who might buy it. They expected to put it out, "do marketing", and make money.

She later ran a workshop she called "No One Cares About You." Her point was blunt. Buyers care about how you will meet a problem, a need, or a want. Research is how you find that out.

She disagreed with another Quora writer, Shashank PS, who had said a completely new product was unlikely to gain much from research. She argued the opposite. A new product is where the questions matter most. Who is the market? Do they want this? Does it fill a need they already feel? If they do not know they need it, how will you show them? Which channels do they actually use? What would they pay? People skip this because it looks dull next to the launch. Her close was that the better you know the market, the more reason that market has to know you.

## Research, and then the market itself

Matt Bertuzzi added two shorter thoughts.

Research can help a great deal. He compared it with learning how a face is built, and how physics works, before you step into a fight. Meeting the market is the punch. You learn from the first. You know more after the second.

He also said he had not known he wanted a thousand songs in his pocket until Steve Jobs told him he could have them. He might have dismissed Twitter in a meeting. A week of using it changed his mind. (That service is now called X. The example is about a product people did not request in advance.)

## Where a small firm can start

For a Jamaican firm, the cheap pass is still secondary data, and it should be local before it is imported. The [Statistical Institute of Jamaica](https://statinja.gov.jm/) publishes the labour force, prices, and trade. The Planning Institute's Economic and Social Survey is the annual account of the economy and the social figures. A custom survey is worth paying for when those sources do not answer the decision you are about to make. Who you ask, and how you ask, is a separate design job.

## Updated October 2026

- Grammar in the 2012 intro was broken ("have asked/ or is still asking themselves'"). It is rewritten. The two Quora arguments are kept and attributed. No new survey results were added.
- Twitter in Bertuzzi's example is named as the service now called X. The iPod line is left as his illustration.
- Secondary sources for a Jamaican reader are pointed at [STATIN](https://statinja.gov.jm/) (live tables, 2026) rather than left as unnamed trade reports.


Source: https://balcostics.com/blog/market-research-small-business/